Ag education blooms again after funding dry spell

Thad Bergschneider, a freshman at Franklin High School, checks Monday on the roots of plants his agricultural class is raising.

Thad Bergschneider, a freshman at Franklin High School, checks Monday on the roots of plants his agricultural class is raising.

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Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree | Journal-Courier

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Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree | Journal-Courier

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Thad Bergschneider, a freshman at Franklin High School, checks Monday on the roots of plants his agricultural class is raising.

Thad Bergschneider, a freshman at Franklin High School, checks Monday on the roots of plants his agricultural class is raising.

Photo:

Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree | Journal-Courier

Ag education blooms again after funding dry spell

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After several years of lower funding, grants for agricultural education are increasing, allowing local high school programs to expand supplies, materials and equipment for their students.

Agricultural education programs typically rely on two sources to cover expenses: state grants and school budgets.

At the state level, funding was increased in 2018, allowing school programs to provide some much needed upgrades.

In Virginia, the combination of the different funding sources allows Jennie Birdsell, the agriculture teacher and FFA adviser, to buy equipment and supplies for her program, supplementing those with FFA fundraisers to cover registration and other fees for conventions and trips.

“Ag education is one of the line items that have gone up in the past few years for the state,” Birdsell said. “With some of the extra money we can afford supplies for our labs, make equipment updates, make improvements for our program.”

Most of the consumable supplies are purchased through her school budget, but it is the grant funding that allows her to buy some of the larger items, Birdsell said.

“We are only allowed to use a certain percentage of the grant funds on consumable items,” she said. “Having the extra grants are a huge help, it helps lift some of the district’s burden.”

For the Franklin School District’s ag program, the department relies on state grants and school funding to cover the costs, in addition to fundraisers the classes and FFA put together.

Brent Nelson, Franklin’s agricultural teacher, said the program receives between $3,000 and $6,000 from the Incentive Funding Grant each year, depending on how active the school’s FFA chapter has been. It also receives between $2,000 and $3,000 from the state Career Technical Education program and funding from a Perkins Grant.

Without the help of the grants, the school wouldn’t have a fully functioning agricultural program, Nelson said.

“We have a school budget at Franklin, but we use most of that for cylinder replacements,” Nelson said. “We have a budget for class supplies, but if we relied solely on school money, we could not run an active program.”

According to the 2018 Illinois Agricultural Education report by Illinois Agricultural Education and FFA, the Illinois School Board of Education has a budget of $5 million to help fund the Incentive Funding Grant and the Three Circle FFA and SAE Grant — which helps cover salary for an agriculture teacher and FFA adviser — as well as other agricultural education programs and grants.

The state board allotted the same amount in 2018, increasing it from $1.8 million in 2016.

Funding for agriculture programs has varied over the years but, in the early 2010s, funding saw a cut, going from $3.04 million in 2010 to $1.9 million in 2011 and $1.8 million in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Funding was at $1.7 million for 2015.

Of the allotted $5 million for 2018, roughly $1.65 million — roughly $5,359 per school — funded the Incentive Funding Grant, according to the report.

“We have had an issue in the past of being fully funded,” said Kelsey Handy, Jacksonville High School’s agricultural teacher.

Handy treats any of the state grants as extra funding but doesn’t count on it when making her budget, she said.

“Anything we have to have, I plan for it to come from my school budget,” Handy said. “We usually find out pretty early what we are going to receive, but I plan on that being extra. We are fortunate that we don’t have to count on that money.”

For Handy, the grant money allows her to provide extra equipment for the agricultural program. She now is looking into buying a set of Chromebook laptops for use exclusively by the agriculture program.

“My school budget is used for smaller things, for the greenhouse or tools and supplies,” Handy said.

The increase in funding has come with an increase in accountability for how the money is spent, Birdsell said.

“There is more paperwork involved,” she said. “They want to make sure we are accountable, to see how the money is being spent. It’s more data tracking.”